PPP: Obama leads Romney by 7 in Colorado

[WI_DEM]

Barack Obama still looks like the favorite to win Colorado again this year, but Mitt Romney's become much more competitive in the state since wrapping up the Republican nomination. Obama leads 49-42. His lead had been 53-40 on PPP's last poll, which was conducted the weekend before Rick Santorum dropped out of the race.

Romney's seen a major improvement in his image in Colorado, as he has nationally, since GOP voters unified around him. His numbers still aren't terribly impressive with 40% of voters rating him favorably to 52% with a negative opinion. But that's up a net 17 points from April when he was at 31/60.

The reason the race has tightened over the last couple months is that Romney's really closed the gap with independents. He still trails Obama 48-38 with them, but that's quite a bit better than April when he was down 57-31. The candidates both have their party bases pretty unified with Obama at 87% of Democrats and Romney at 84% of Republicans.

There's been an interesting shift along racial lines over the last 2 months. Obama's doing better with Hispanics than he was previously, leading 60-33 compared to a previous advantage of 53-38. But he's doing worse with whites, leading only 47-45, down from 52-41 in April. About a third of the interviews for this poll were conducted prior to Obama's immigration announcement so it would be simplistic to ascribe those shifts to that, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

A couple other interesting notes on demographic divides in Colorado:

-Women continue to be the key to Obama's reelection chances. He leads by 14 with them in Colorado at 54-40, while he can only manage a tie with men at 45.
-There's a huge generational divide in Colorado that doesn't bode well for the GOP's long term prospects in the state. Mitt Romney is up 14 points with voters over 65, 53-39. But with everyone else he's trailing by 12 points and among voters under 30 he's down 2:1, 58-29. Colorado's been shifting towards the Democrats over the last decade and unless Republicans can appeal more to younger people that movement's going to continue.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/06/obama-leads-in-colorado.html

[hrmjustin]

1. Romney may not fight as hard here. the dems did better here...

...in 2010 than in other swing states.